Sunday night I noticed water on the sidewalk between our building and the one next door, where the electric meters are on the little wall. Lo and behold, where we had 6 meters for the 2 buildings, now there was 1. The other 5 meters were sort of scattered around. The copper pipes had been cut at ground level. I can't imagine it was more than 1.5 feet for each section. The next morning Aguakan was out front working and said we had to take our current bill and the meter to their office, which we did. We are going to be billed $309 for a brand new meter and the installation of PVC pipes. Turns out the 6th one was damaged and apparently something spooked the crooks in mid theft and they bolted. For now they have given us a straight connection to the water supply and will bill us for our average water use until they get the meters in. In our building only 2 of us have taken the meters in so the third one is just connected by a hose. Apparently these crooks are working the entire city. BUT THEY WERE SEEN - GUYS IN A GREEN TRUCK. That's all we have for now. SO BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THEM NEAR YOUR WATER METER. Ours were hit around midnight according to 2 people who noticed them.
I woke up one morning about 10 years ago and had no hot water. Went to check the gas tank (on one side of the house)connection to the hot water heater (other side of the house) over the roof and lo and behold, they had gotten up on the roof and taken the copper tubing during the night. Considerate though--they didn't even wake us up! It has also been happening so much to city public lighting that the city has changed and has started using aluminum instead of copper!
Sigh, so sad. They hit our roof a couple of months ago, pretty ballsy of them to be doing it out in the open like that though! I guess most people would just assume they were "working" not "thieving". They've stolen our water meters a few times now (we've never been asked to pay for them though, don't know how I would feel about that). We replaced all the copper with plastic, far less tempting.
it happened to us about 4 months ago.... and I am talking about a 21-apt condo! They climbed to the roof, and we realized because we suddenly had a huge leak of water no owner could be responsible for!
Our rental condo in SM31 was was hit. They busted the lock to the roof area and stole the pipes for most, but not all, of the 16 apartments. The street our house is on has not been hit yet, but we have a 24 hour guard and the street is dead end (with a 10 foot wall at the closed end), so it's not easy to get away with much here...(now that I've said that we will get hit tonight).
I saw an article in Novedades about 3 or 4 days ago , three guys got caught steeling copper. I cant remember the location
